Take a Walk.......

Saturday, May 27, 2006

The reservation controversy

A post which I had put on May 18th on one of my other blogs for avoiding controversy on this one, but now think should be here.

Its been over a month since the old Congress warhorse Arjun Singh, well aware that he's grown too old and loosing significance along with the grand old party headed for same fate, proposed to implement the reservations for the OBC's in the central universities. Since, that day onwards controversy has been raging like fire which has engulfed at least the medical fraternity completely. There has been sharp criticism of the move from the top honchos of the industry with the usual suspects like Murthy and Premji airing their grouse.

After all this mayhem that is going around, with the SC/ST's saying that since their percetange to the population has increased their reservation % should also be increased, A thought strikes my mind.

If the SC/ST's and then the OBC's, NT's are to be given reservation's in accordance with their percentage of the population in country, some political parties trying to bring in reservation for the Muslims, the other for economically back ward, blah, blah, blah.... We can devise a simple formula that can bring an end all this trouble by making 100% seats reserved. The question is how??.

Well its simple each community can be allotted reservations according to their population, the percentage can be adjusted after every census. According to the census report that I currently got from http://educationforallinindia.com/censusreligiondata.xls, The Hindus can be allocated 80.5 % approx of the seats with further division based on caste, the Muslims 13.5% approx, The Sikhs 1.9 approx and most interestingly there's a percentage of people who chose not to reveal their religion they number 727588 or 0.071% of the population, they can be accordingly allocated the seats.

And the reserved seats should not be limited only to educational institutes, the reservations should be extended to the parliament, the police force, army and why spare the private sector. This way we can claim proudly to the world that we are a country of equals, where no injustice is done to any. Its a different matter that if this continues for long we might not have a country left called India, but still all can have seats reserved according to their caste, creed and religion and be contented that they have somewhere to go even if they are the most useless piece of sh*t in the world.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Freedom of speech & Communal harmony

I was stumped at the sharp reaction that has ensued after Amir Khan expressed his solidarity for the NBA and condemned the Vadodara riots. The state of Gujarat has put a virtual ban on his movies and all this for what??. Haven't people before supported the NBA, haven't others condemned the Vadodara riots and 2002 massacre before. Why such a sharp reaction on his remarks, there's nothing even so strong about his remarks. The following is a excerpt from outlook site,

"I think it is [Vadodara incident] very sad and what happened in Gujarat a few years ago was also equally unfortunate. It’s a shame that the administration is not able to control the situation there and it is resulting in deaths of innocent people," according to a BBC transcript of the interview. It doesn't matter which religion these victims belong to. The bottom line is they are all human beings. It seems to me that the law and order machinery or the administration is simply not capable of controlling the situation," Aamir said, responding to a query from a fan.

Take the first statement where he says the incident is very sad, What is he expected to say, "It was a glorious event" or "The job was so well executed, I am proud of it", wasn't it unfortunate by all standards that innocent people were killed. Further, he said, "It’s a shame that the administration is not able to control the situation....". Who in the world, except the perpetrators of the crime, doesn't believe that the law and order machinery in the state was a conniving element in both the events?

Sadly, the social atmosphere in the state has become so vitiated that logic and reason have gone for a toss. Only thing that rules is rhetoric and hatred and people are blindly following the call of the selfish and greedy politicians, who can steep down any limits for power.

The question I have in my mind at this point is whether the reaction had been same had this comments not come from Amir who himself belongs to the minority community but someone from the other side of the religious divide. Secondly, doesn't Amir as a citizen of India has the freedom of speech provided by the constitution, has the fundamental right to talk on the social issues in the country. Sadly, any discussion on these issues are silenced by the accusation of being unpatriotic and anti-India, especially if it is made by someone from the minority community.

Coming again to the Vadodara riots which I had intentionally abstained from commenting, When I mentioned in an earlier post that the country is sitting on a virtual keg of gunpowder the claim looked highly exaggerated to anyone who read it. The way the events turned up in Vadodara reaffirms my conviction in my own statement and most importantly that something needs to be done to quell the communal disharmony that has stained the social fabric of the country so badly.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Of "pathetic jobs" and lots of money..... Part II

A few months back I had written a post on how IT employees keep cribbing about their jobs Of "pathetic jobs" and lots of money..... in which I had presented some fact on why the IT employees seem to be such a disgruntled lot. Here I continue with the same and try to put some more facts and figures.

Apart from a Trend and The Quest for good work that I had mentioned as the last two reasons, The next most important reasons for which most IT employees vent their displeasure are,

3) Overly qualified :- Most of the people would disagree with me on this but I would still stand by this reason, Most of the IT employees are over-qualified for the kind of jobs they do. As mentioned previously that IT employees keep complaining about the quality of work they are assigned and that most of the work taken up by Indian companies is by any standards second rate compared to an world standard. But that's not the case with the employees, most of the top IT companies hire the cream of the Indian society, so you would see IITian's joining Infosys, Wipro etc and similarly MTech's and other higher degree holders are hired by the big and small companies.

These students come from an environment of stiff competition and utter hard work, but are in for an big shock when they realize that they are supposed to send only technical support mails or make excel sheets for years in the name of working on production support projects. This problem can be taken care simply by better resource management, so that people are allocated work according to their background and aptitude. Most of the IT companies lack good Project Management capabilities with one of the top 6 IT companies given a rating of poor by one of its major clients and this further alleviates the attrition level.

4) Money/Market condition :-Money is one of the most and in most cases the most important reason for which most people work, some work only for the love of it for other's it's a second choice. But whatever may be the case, most of the people would jump ship for money at least once a lifetime.

Now, consider the scenario where there is too much of money chasing a commodity which is not so easily available and highly saleable, This is results in what they call in economics as inflation. Now, replace the commodity with a good software engineer and the saleable part with their mobility. That's the crux of the problem with the Indian IT industry, It is passing through one of its best phases of rapid growth and this has resulted in spurt of demand of quality software engineers to very high levels, The top software companies hiring more then 100% of their current strength every year from a high base levels. The engineers can easily comprehend the shortage and bargain for higher and higher pay packages or switch jobs to achieve their objective. Since most of them are highly mobile, ready to move on the word go to any part of the world it becomes very difficult to retain good talent.

Enthralling victory for Hingis

Last Saturday gave me the chance to watch an enthralling semi-final match between Martina and Venus Williams, one who would have read my previous post Of favourites and comebacks won't have any confusion as to who I was supporting.

From loosing the first set 0-6 to coming back and winning the match 0-6,6-3,6-3 and going ahead to win the tournament, Hingis heads to Paris after stirring Rome comeback win,it was an amazing comeback for the Swiss Ms. Many at times during the match I felt she might just give it in. Since it was very much evident who was the more powerful player, who was serving faster or much much faster it seemed that in this era of tennis where even the Women's section has seen remarkably powerful players the beautiful game of tennis is lost. But one look at Hingis' game changes that all, she's a beautiful artist at the game who I love to watch and hope I get many more chance to see her winning and with the French open in sight and Hingis regaing top form I expect a nice treat.